It was a lovely Friday morning. Fridays are always lovely as I look forward for a nice weekend. A little hectic since yesterday as last Wednesday & Thursday of every month is terribly busy in office due to nature of my work, hence this Friday was really very-very special.

I was talking to a customer who had some questions about the product I own but I realized that I was not the right person to answer. Usually, I ask them to talk to concerned person but today, I decided to give it a shot and try to help him find the answers. I started explaining to him the whole process, helped him run some reports, cross questioned and within seconds, surprisingly this guy made me feel the greatest employee of the company at least for rest of my meeting with him. What was it which actually made this happen? When I retrospect, I found him saying "Thanks" at least ten times, he used sentences like "it was an eye opener", "I never realized, I would find such a great information" etc. etc. and all this made me feel great.

Why it happened? Would it happen if I just asked him to contact the right person and getting rid of any liability? Would it happen if I had just emailed him with some references to the information? Certainly NOT. It's not that I spent hours with the customer. It was just 5 minutes and it made rest fourteen hours of my remaining day. I kept my thought process going and trying to find reasons.

You know why? Very simple reason! I was NICE! It didn't cost me anything. It didn't require any extra effort from me and it just needed 5 small minutes! Simple! Probably, I didn't observe myself.  Just to validate it, I called some other customer and while talking, tried to observe this time. Yes-it was working, I was nice and she was nice-the whole conversation was nice and it ended up nice!  Let me do some retrospection and see how it started.

And you know what I just recalled? Around two years back,  because of some conflict at the job, I decided to just "pretend" to be nice. Any meeting, any e-mail, any phone call, I had a reminder going on in back of the head-"Remember Mr., you need to play nice". I practiced it for a while, pretended it for a while and suddenly I saw the reminders were all gone as if somebody just went ahead and switched them off.  The "actor" from my brain migrated to the reflex arc and had become citizen of my reflex action. I cannot act it anymore as now, it has become similar to applying breaks suddenly while seeing something in front of the car. Is this something people call as a habit? Yes! I wish if it had even changed my genes as well.

Let us leave Biology and turn to Physics now and let us thank Mr. Newton for coming up with his third law. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". This is something, has been happening whenever I have been nice to the person opposite to me. How can he (or she) not be nice to me if I am nice to him/her? It has to follow the third law-it is law of the nature! Now, I have been practicing it for last two years and it seem works most of the time! Remember, all laws in a Physics used to have a fine print like the credit card offers in our mailbox, which said "conditions apply-normal temperature and pressure only" and probably this happens here too. Some people don't respond nicely even if you are your ever nicest to them but I am 100% certain that these are only 1% people who don't respond as expected because they are part of the fine printed condition and probably are not under normal temperature and pressure.

There were some other things which really acted as vitamins while I was taking "being nice" as a medicine. Let us go over them and really see how they can help us moving niceness from the brain to the reflex arc:

The first thing comes to my mind is “Forgiveness”. Forgiveness is the most lethal weapon you can use with somebody whom you think is your enemy. As soon as I forgive, I become nice and feel great within myself. Forgiveness might also be interpreted as "cowardly" or "getting away" from the issue but by forgiving somebody for cursing me, I still have rights to tell the person-"I didn't like it but it's OK" or "Let us ensure that this does not happen in future". During some recent soft skill course, somebody quoted "By forgiving somebody, you take his rights to hurt yourself". And one more thing I have experienced is that by forgiving, you also save yourself from regrets you might feel if you realize later that you misunderstood the person.

Choosing words while giving a message is also very important. I remember one ex boss of mine during beginning of my professional career told me about "choosing words". The example he gave me and now I give to others, was a little exaggerated but it very well communicated the message. It goes like-You can warn somebody as "Do it or I will slap you" and by choosing a different set of words you can also say "Please do it or my hands might kiss your cheek". Though exaggerated, I must say it tells me what I am supposed to do when choosing my words.

Another boss in my recent career, whom I never liked. I still remember him for giving me a hard time but I forgave him as without him, I would never have seen the good part of the career I am seeing after leaving him. This guy gave me a piece of advice after he shouted at me in a meeting in front of 10 other colleagues. He later on (kind of but didn't exactly) apologized but also told me that he felt being cornered while I was talking to him in the meeting and the only reaction he could think of, was to "shout". Now I always take care of this thing while talking to anybody. I try my best not to corner him or her as "by cornering, I am giving him a right to hurt me"-Trust me, it is my quotation, I just made. Everybody has natural right to defend himself and if you corner, you are forcing him to use his rights.

One more thing which is a little difficult to follow but trust me, it gives a great pleasure in the long run. Always consider the person in front of you as more knowledgeable than you. Always consider the person more capable than you and has more maturity than you. This creates an environment of trust and respect which automatically makes us nice while communicating.

So all this is making, or at least trying to make me nice. I am not acting anymore and I really enjoy being nice. I love the compliments I get which I could never get if I hadn't been nice. I love the smile on people's face when they feel good about me being nice. I feel great when I am nice. I feel a nice cool breeze of trust, affection and closeness when I am nice. I find the world around me the most beautiful when I am nice. I love everybody and everybody loves me when I am nice. So why not just become nice and feel the joy?